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Football: CU Buffs still struggling to recruit in Colorado

Only three locals headed to Boulder on signing day

By Kyle Ringo Buffzone.com

Posted:
02/05/2013 07:58:40 PM MST

Updated:
02/05/2013 07:58:48 PM MST

University of Colorado football fans haven't needed any reminders of their program's recent failings when it comes to keeping the best in-state recruits home for college, but the 2012 season offered plenty of high-profile, painful examples.

Today is national signing day and for the fifth consecutive year CU will watch as most of the elite talent in the state sign with other programs around the country. The Buffs haven't landed the No. 1 overall recruit in the state since 2009 and they haven't landed more than three members of the top-10 in the state since 2008.

The challenge for first-year coach Mike MacIntyre is to end the in-state exodus without a recent winning season or bowl game to point to and with the perception of the CU program sinking to levels not seen since the early 1980s.

MacIntyre is expected to sign a class of 18-19 players, the majority of whom were recruited to CU by former coach Jon Embree and his staff. The list of recruits CU will announce today includes three in-state prospects. Only one of those Colorado prep standouts is rated among the top-15 in the state by Rivals.com. And that player, running back Phillip Lindsay from Denver South, suffered a serious knee injury during his senior season.

Some of the state's best gave CU only a courtesy look during the process this time around before committing to programs such as Michigan, Arkansas or Auburn. CU fans are left to hope that those players won't become stars for their chosen programs in the future while the Buffs continue to struggle. Watching that scenario unfold last fall made CU's 1-11 season that much tougher to swallow.

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"Over the course of time, you really have to work this state," Cherry Creek High School coach and Denver Broncos radio play-by-play man Dave Logan said. "You have to spend time in high schools. You have to develop a relationship with high school coaches. You've got to be visible and too often that has not been the case for our in-state universities. No disrespect to anybody who has been up there before, but I'm anxious to see if things are going to change as we move forward."

Logan said he thought the previous CU coaching staff led by Jon Embree was beginning to make some inroads with high school coaches and prospects around the state but that staff didn't have enough time to fully turn things around.

Logan said CSU coach Jim McElwain has done well in his first year on the job to establish relationships and try to recapture the state and he has seen early signs from MacIntyre that he intends to do the same. But time will tell.

"I've coached kids that I think would have had an interest in going to CU and CU either didn't want the kids or didn't think that they had enough talent, but they really didn't recruit them," Logan said.

Some of those players passed over by previous CU coaches earned a national spotlight for their success last fall while the Buffs spun their wheels and made another coaching change.

Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein might not have seemed like such a big loss back in 2008 when he was more or less ignored by CU as a playmaking quarterback at Loveland High School. Klein was ranked the eighth best recruit in the state that year by Rivals.com, but he became a Heisman Trophy candidate early last fall and finished third in the voting for the most prestigious individual award in the college game.

Missing on Klein was one of the worst recruiting blunders in history for both CU and Colorado State.

Notre Dame linebacker Danny Spond was a much more highly sought after prospect than Klein coming out of Columbine High School in Littleton in 2010. He was a four-star recruit with offers from dozens of programs around the country and initially committed to the Buffs. But at the tail end of the 2009 season he changed his commitment to Notre Dame after watching the Buffs lose to Nebraska in the season finale in Boulder and sensing a lack of energy and passion around the program.

Spond started most of this season at outside linebacker for the Fighting Irish last season and helped them reach a No. 1 national ranking and play for the national title.

Saturdays were already painful enough in 2012 for CU fans, but watching former Colorado prep stars shine for other programs added to the agony.

Former Fairview star Kenny Bell became the leading receiver at Nebraska with 50 catches for 863 yards and eight touchdowns. He would have been nice to have on the CU roster when Paul Richardson went down with a knee injury last spring.

Former Cherry Creek star Cain Colter emerged as a star in the making with Northwestern. He started 12 of 13 games at quarterback and also played some wide receiver during the year. He finished the season with 894 yards rushing and 12 touchdowns and completed 68 percent of his passes for 872 yards and eight touchdowns. He also caught 16 passes for 169 yards. That's almost 2,000 yards of total offense in the Big Ten.

While it has been tough for Buffs fans to see players like Klein, Bell, Colter and Spond enjoy success with other programs, it's also true that those players have been the exception.

A much higher percentage of in-state prep stars who have signed with out-of-state programs in recent years haven't proven nearly as valuable to the programs they joined -- at least not yet. Some have opted to transfer or have been career second or third-string players to this point in their careers.

CU and CSU will never build nationally prominent programs filled with a majority of in-state players. Colorado simply doesn't produce enough elite talent. Both programs will always have to draw from California and Texas and other talent-rich areas of the country, but Logan says history has shown that consistently bringing the best of the best from state schools to Boulder and Fort Collins is part of the winning formula.

Logan said one of the biggest challenges MacIntyre faces is selling recruits on the idea of coming to Boulder to rebuild instead of leaving the state to join programs already entrenched in winning. Recruiting to a 1-11 record, seven consecutive losing seasons and five years without a bowl game is the challenge MacIntyre faces looking ahead to 2014.

"I think it's an obstacle that they have to overcome, especially with blue chip talent in this state," Logan said. "You're going to have other universities and their pitch will be, 'Hey, we're going to go to a bowl game every single year. We're going to contend for the conference championship every year and you're going to be on national TV. So that's something Colorado used to be able to say and right now you've got to rebuild that thing up to where those caliber of players will give the in-state schools a look."

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